Jane Moore started as a journalist on a local paper and is now one of the highest-paid women in the industry, with a weekly column in The Sun. She is also a successful novelist and a regular face on TV, most recently popping up as team captain on Rob Brydon’s Annually Retentive. She’s just launched her own consumer website http://www.youthejury.com

You’re a journalist, author, TV talking head and now an Internet entrepreneur. What’s your favourite?

My newspaper column. If I had to give everything up, I’d still keep the column. I’m in the middle of writing my fifth novel now. It’s not a process that comes naturally. I write for a living and then go off and do more writing.

What’s this website you’ve set up all about?

It’s a consumer website. I’m lucky that I’ve got a national newspaper column – if I get bad service in a shop or from a company, I can tell everyone about it. The website gives people a chance to do that themselves. Hopefully, one day, when people are thinking of buying something, they’ll check it out on my website first so they don’t get ripped off. It’s about making informed choices.

If the website takes off and you sell it in five years, will you retire and put your feet up?

Yes, that would be fantastic but I’m sure it’s a while off yet. You get guys like the ones who sold YouTube and they just get shares in Google. You don’t even get the cash. It would be lovely five years down the line to sell it for a lot of money but in the meantime, I’ll keep on working.

Do you enjoy writing fiction or is it an ordeal?

It’s weird. As a tabloid journalist, you only ever write 1,500 words at the most so to have to write 120,000 is really quite difficult. Tabloid journalists don’t bother with description; you get straight to the point. Novels go completely against that. You build up the tension and don’t have the main attraction until the middle of the book. It’s like learning to snowboard after you know how to ski; it’s a completely different discipline.

How did you get into writing novels?

All journalists think they can write a novel in their lunch hour but it’s a lot harder than that. I met an agent at a party. She said I should write a book and kept pestering me. I wrote a synopsis and three chapters and she took it to a publisher and I got an advance. It built up from there. I’m getting more used to structuring a book. If you’re writing mass market fiction, there’s a method to it but it’s a lonely old business. I sit in my garret, tapping away, thinking: ‘Oh God, give me inspiration.’

What have been your favourite stories as a news reporter?

I broke the story of a woman called Lady Rosemary Aberdour who nicked £3million from the hospital where she worked as an accountant. She was spending all the money on penthouses, parties and cars and pretending to be an aristocrat but she was a nobody. I got on to the story before the police and stayed ahead of the game. It was huge at the time. I also covered the Rose West trial and I used to be a royal correspondent so I chased Charles and Diana all over the world. I was sent off skiing and to Necker Island following them. It’s a hard life [laughs].

What was the worst thing you had to do?

I was sent to Broadmoor because we were told Peter Sutcliffe was going to be let out on a Saturday night to go to a disco. Yeah, right. I waited outside all night in a Morris Minor. Also, just after Elton John sued The Sun, I was sent by the editor, Kelvin McKenzie, to Elton’s 40th birthday wearing a sandwich board saying ‘Happy Birthday Elton, love from The Sun’. I was told not to come back without a picture of me wearing this board, standing next to him. I waited at the end of the driveway and he just sped past in a car with blacked-out windows.

Are there any celebrities you’ve written about in your column who hate you now?

Quite a few. Sinéad O’Connor hates me. What I wrote wasn’t that bad by my usual standards. I’d gone to a Linda McCartney tribute concert where she just waffled on and I said she was rubbish. She phoned me and threatened to break my legs. The next week, she became a priest and sent me a three-page apology saying she was sorry and that she didn’t know what had come over her. She’s barking, obviously. I’ve kept it somewhere as a souvenir for if I ever write my memoirs.

You were an estate agent for a while. Were you any good at it?

I was, actually, for the simple reason that it was during the yuppie property boom of the 1980s. I worked in Putney and Fulham, which was the area where people were buying houses without even viewing them first. If you can’t make money in that climate, there’s no hope for you. The minute the property market slumped, I went back to journalism; going around in a sandwich board at 5am had worn me out. I was very honest and people respect that. An honest estate agent would go a long way.